My older son had such a good time that the younger one wanted to play too. So this weekend we made a character for him too.

My youngest son had a much simpler idea for a character than his brother. He too wanted a character inspired by cartoons and originally came up with a guy that could throw cards that had monsters and gear on them and have that stuff appear, like Yu-gi-oh. When we drew him up on paper, he stuck a jesters cap on him too, and the older kid wanted to call him "Card Clown". Younger kid preferrred the name "Card JESTER".

But then we revised the concept a little and after some more brainstorming and some video-gaming on Gametap he changed the idea to "Kaboom! The clown with bombs"

So basicly his idea was a clown character with a bag of tricks. Most which were bombs. We drew it again and this time it looked a lot cooler than the jester with cards- now we had sort of a jester but he had big cartoony bombs.

I designed the character around several kinds of grenades: he has "big bombs" which explode for damage, "Glue Bombs" which explode for snare attacks, "Mystery Bombs" which explode and leave illusions, and "Cloud Bombs" which are used for concealment. Also we gave character leaping and acrobatics. a minimal score of Leaping +2 was enough to give this character a 55' jump.

The illusion bombs were a nod to the original concept of using bombs for summoning stuff. But since Spirit-Keeper already has a summon power, I wanted to guide them away from duplicating. Spirit-Keeper himself already required two character sheets (one for the summoned guardian).

Ok, so AP reports up next: we did three small adventures, all in a row.  

"Zoo-Capers", "Maze of Madness", and "Danger in the Danger Room"

Zoo-Capers: The first adventure.

While the kids were making stuff and drawing I had been making up characters for fun, and one of those was my character Moon Princess. I statted her up and also statted up some alien monsters.

In this adventure the characters stumble upon someone yelling for help, claiming that her home had been invaded by a wild beast of some kind. They had been "walking to school" so they didn't have their costumes handy. Anyhow, they wasted no time running in to help, and discovering a massive alien beast ravaging some lady's refrigerator.

Once Spirit-keeper assured that nobody was watching, he teleported in, and used his magic blasts to try and drive the creature off. Kaboom followed behind, and tried to use an illusion bomb (creating a giant cage), but the creature escaped.

The lady was shocked to find an illusionary cage in her living room, but she was probably already shocked by the alien monster that tore up her kitchen. The kids ran for it, after the monster got away.

Later that day, at school the kids hear that a few other wild beasts have been spotted. After school, as they were walking home, I had them notice an alien bug creature lurking in the area where the first attack took place.  (My metagaming older son guessed that it was actually Moon Princess's sidekick from seeing the character sheet.) They didn't bother my bug creature.

(GM Note: That was where I was going to introduce a red herring by having the heroes inadvertently battle with Moon Princess before teaming up with her. Classic comic book schtick.)

So when they arrive home they hear that more alien beasts have been spotted and they are converging down at the zoo. So the kids get their costumes on and head down there via teleport spell.

(more later)

Back at the zoo I had a pair of beasts running around scaring people, so we could get right into the action stuff.

As opposed to previous battles, they didn't even fool around. Spiritkeeper started out by summoning his guardian first (neglecting setting up his magical armor-- and getting charged by one of the beasts- which bruised him). Kaboom was going to use his exploding bombs but when he saw that they might injure someone else in the area he switched to glue bombs.

So for about 4 rounds they battled back and forth among the animal cages, with Kaboom focusing on snaring the creatures (he managed to glue both down) and Spiritkeeper using blasts and his guardian. On one critical fumble, Kaboom actually dropped a glue bomb directly on Spiritkeeper, who escaped by teleporting out. But he had glue all over him. Hero point!

Then, Moon Princess arrives with her sidekick and explains that the beasts were drawn to her alien beacon. The beasts had escaped from a disabled alien smugglers ship and she was trying to recapture them before they caused too much trouble. She then lectures them for being kids and getting involved in danger (which was me trying to get my kids riled up, and it totally worked).

Then the zookeepers arrive for the fun part: it seems the battle against the aliens released several normal zoo animals into the public and he needed someone to help round them up. They could choose between a group of monkeys, an elelphant and a lion, but with the idea that they had to solo each encounter.

Kaboom picked the monkeys and Spirit-Keeper picked the lion. That left Moon Princess for the elephant.

(more later)

It sounds like you are doing an awesome job in introducing your kids to rpgs by making age appropriate encounters.  In other words, it's cool that you are playing with your kids:

Quote from: ancientgamerIt sounds like you are doing an awesome job in introducing your kids to rpgs by making age appropriate encounters.  In other words, it's cool that you are playing with your kids:

Agreed.

I actually ran an animals escape from the Zoo game with Superworld, back in the day.

BTW, Are you using M&M 2e?

Quote from: AosAgreed.

I actually ran an animals escape from the Zoo game with Superworld, back in the day.

BTW, Are you using M&M 2e?

Yup, and I have 1e and the campaign I ran with that a couple of years ago actually fizzled because there was a lot of unclear-ities (at leats to me) about where protection and damage saves capped out and that sort of thing. 2E is by comparison -- awesome, all of my issues with 1E have been addressed in 2E.
The majority of my GenCon purchases were actually Mutants and Masterminds. (quick review: Ultimate Powers is good, Masterminds Guide is borderline ok, but may shine better when I actually start designing a campaign world rather than run silver age stuff).

I'll post about the rest of the animal-capture encounters pretty soon.

I got an interesting insight into the way my 9 year old thinks after the game when he confided why he chose the lion over the elephant or the monkeys. The 6 year old picked monkeys just because they were fun, but the 9 year old picked the lion because (this was pretty smart I thought) "my dimensional pocket power wouldn't fit an elephant in it".

And sure enough, he used dimensional pocket to fight the lion, by allowing it to pounce on him, and then activating the power.